Customer Reviews

Videohound's Golden Movie Retriever 2004

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a very comprehensive book. The movies are rated from four bones to woof!. Each movie comes with a distription of the plot as well as complete cast and production personel. The book is divided into sections. One section is the catagory section which groups the movies into every catagory and topic conceivable, such as; school daze, dates from Hell and modern cowboys as well as places such as Minnesota, San Francisco and Florida. Obviously a movie can fit more than one catagory. There is an awards section that lists all of the major awards given such as the Oscars and Golden globes and the Independent Spirit Awards. the list also includes the razzies, for the worst in Hollywood. There is also an actor, director and cinemotograoher section. since the book is comprehsive it is quite large and expensive. I recomend the Leonard Maltin Book. He writes thoruogh reviews and has a cast and director index and the book is less expensive.

This is the best movie guide available today, not so much because of its reviews (they're as generally reliable but opinionated as any other guide) but because of the massive amount of indexes, which go way beyond other guides. Definitely worth purchasing as a physical companion of sorts to the online Internet Movie Database (imdb.com).

Since I am a movie buff, I LOVE this book, and read it in bed! It's a good read for anyone wanting to know what kind of movies they would like to see. It's a lot better than anything Leonard Maltin has ever done, and it's also better than Roger Ebert's I hated, I hated, I HATED this movie, which is good, but it contains mostly B-movies.

This movie guide seems to have info on a whole lot of movies. The reviews are not especially long or in-depth (they're about two paragraphs for most movies, longer for major or important films), but they give you enough info to know what the movie is like and I find that MOST of the time I agree with what they have to say. There may be some movies it doesn't cover, but I spent some time trying to think of ones that wouldn't be in it, and it wasn't easy.

But, to me the best part of this book is that it's fun to read. The bad movies get slammed in a creative fashion (in one movie, they "ride the one joke premise like a rented Ferrari"), and there are jokes, etc. And in addition to indexes of actors, directors, etc., they have a list of categories, some of which are pretty specific and some of which are entertaining, like "Korean War", "Farming", "Phobias", "Stolen from Europe" (American remakes of European films), "Tennis", "Venice", "Scared 'Chuteless" (Skydiving without one piece of important equipment), etc.

I also have the electronic version (for the Palm handheld) made by pocketsensei.com, which is nice because the actual paper book is the size of phone book and not too portable. The Palm version, of course, fits in your pocket, and I take my Palm with me most of the time, so I can refer to it while I am in Blockbuster or at Best Buy to buy a video or whatever. (You can read the back of the DVD box, but since 100% of them say the movie is awesome, that's pretty worthless.)

The VideoHound is my movie bible when I'm looking to add films to my Netflix que. The reviews are brief and direct, and you can search by title, actor, director, and subject. It's the best movie guide I have found, and I buy a new one every year.

While Videohound's Movie Retrievers are overall the best thing going in terms of comprehensive film information I have found that the 2004 edition has an abnormal amount of mistakes/omissions in it than previous - as well as - later editions. I applaud the Videohound and love the product - but it's only as good as the accuracy of the information held within - so with that I have to rate this edition inferior to the others and must deduct a star. However what is right, is right on, so I can't give it any less than 3 stars.

Love it! Someone asks "What was Casablanca's rating?" and the answer is at your fingertips! Looking at woofs is so funny, I reread them hundreds of times. Best book to read when you have finished the latest New York Times Bestseller and are waiting for your next book to be mailed. Fabulous!

I love this book! I find myself agreeing with almost everything they have to say about a movie. (Unlike my experience with Maltin's guide-- can you believe he didn't like "Dead Again"?)

My only wish is that they'd put it out on CD-ROM!

This guide covers movies, video and high quality DVD. Titles are set forth alphabetically with meaningful descriptions of each
movie/presentation. Samples of rated movies are as follows:

o Castle of the Living and Dead
o Diamonds Are Forever

This volume is updated each year to reflect new acquisitions.
It is a good value for the price charged.

I use it constantly. I use the indexes all the time too. Over 26,000 reviews and sometimes long, comprehensive ones. Most of the reviews are right on the money or very close.I can honestly say that i have rarely strongly disagreed with it's opinion. I love the fact that the book will give a perfect 4 bones to a small ,largely unknown newer movie like "Spider" or how when he loves a movie he doen't have to wait to say it is great, like "Road to Perdition." However i do have one HUGE complaint, and i can't get over it. How in the hell is Matin Scorsese 1976 Masterpiece "Taxi Driver" not worthy of 4 bones, atleast 3 and a half bones. Even a good but in hindsight certainly not great movie like "Driving Miss Daisy" gets 3 and a half bones. Now that's crazy. Oh well ,besides that i have to say i absolutely can't imagine my film watching life without this book.